William Ury has stepped in to help with many of the world’s thorniest negotiations: nuclear agreements between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union; the unrest that almost toppled Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in the early 2000s; and a recent showdown between Brazilian supermarket magnate Abilio Diniz and French retailer Casino.

Ury is the co-founder of Harvard University’s Program on Negotiation and author of the 1981 book “Getting to Yes,” a classic text used in everything from marriage counseling to international negotiations. His years of observing and assisting negotiations have taught him a fundamental lesson: often, our most stubborn and challenging opponent is ourselves.

That observation is the basis of a new book, “Getting to Yes with Yourself,” which explores the ways we sabotage our own best interests, and how to get over it. Read More »

For the first time in 20 years, the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth has a new dean.

Matthew Slaughter, Tuck’s associate dean for faculty, will take on the elite school’s top job on July 1. After a tenure spanning two decades, Dean Paul Danos will be stepping down at the end of this academic year, a move announced last March.

Slaughter, 45, wants to shake up the traditional M.B.A. model, because students want flexible alternatives to two-year, full-time programs, he said in an interview. Among his aims: building a digital platform for Tuck courses akin to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School offerings on Coursera or Harvard Business School’s HBX digital platform, which offers online access to course materials.

“We imagine a future where we might have a broader way that students access the Tuck M.B.A. degree,” he said. Read More »

President Barack Obama gives his State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress Tuesday.

AP

Being a working parent isn’t cheap.

In Tuesday’s State of the Union address, President Obama highlighted the financial struggles of working parents and pledged to make childcare more affordable.

“In today’s economy, when having both parents in the workforce is an economic necessity for many families, we need affordable, high-quality childcare more than ever,” he said, calling it a “must-have,” and not a “nice-to-have.”

For plenty of families, access to childcare, and paying for it, are often crucial determinants of whether both parents choose to work out of the home.

A new study of 366 public companies in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Brazil, Mexico and Chile by McKinsey & Co., a major management consultancy, found a statistically significant relationship between companies with women and minorities in their upper ranks and better financial performance as measured by earnings before interest and tax, or EBIT.

McKinsey researchers examined the gender, ethnic and racial makeup of top management teams and boards for large concerns across a range of industries as of 2014. Then, they analyzed the firms’ average earnings before interest and taxes between 2010 and 2013. Read More »

Where they once won regular promotions, they’re suddenly passed over–leaving them feeling stale and stuck. Their old ways no longer work. Yet they don’t understand why.

If this sounds like you, it’s time to take action and revive your trajectory. Plateaus are inevitable during the decades of a work life. But as businesses raise expectations for managers’ performance, even a little coasting can kill a career, leadership experts say. Read More »

Bosses, here’s what young employees wish you knew: You’re not tapping their full potential.

More than half of workers polled in a global survey of young professionals say they aspire to the top job at their organization, but only about one in four feel their current employer makes full use of their skills. The survey of over 7,800 workers born after January 1983 was conducted by consulting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd., and offers a snapshot of a new generation’s career aspirations and attitudes towards work.

The survey findings, released Wednesday, show that workers in emerging markets like Colombia and Indonesia feel sanguine about their prospects. Nearly two-thirds of workers in those markets said they had designs on the corner office, rather than 38% of those in the developed world. Read More »

For the last six years, the search firm Heidrick & Struggles has analyzed the share of newly appointed board members at Fortune 500 companies who are female. Back in 2009, 18% of new board members were women; last year, it was 29%. And Catalyst’s analysis of the S&P 500 – using data from October 2014 — finds that the number of companies with zero women on their boards dropped to 18 – or 3.6% — from 25 a year earlier, a sign that more companies are taking action. Read More »

Welcome to Ask the CEO, in which chief executives take time out from running companies to solve your career problems.

David Prokupek, 53 years old, runs Jackson Hewitt Tax Service Inc. He joined the company last March from hamburger chain Smashburger, where he was CEO. Based in Parsippany, N.J., Jackson Hewitt employs 40,000 tax preparers during tax season, which runs from January to April 15. The company emerged from bankruptcy in 2011 and now has about 6,300 locations across the country.

Q.: How do I switch industries?

Figure out what your value-add is in the thing you’re doing and go pitch that to the next industry. Read More »

About At Work

Written and edited by The Wall Street Journal’s Management & Careers group, At Work covers life on the job, from getting ahead to managing staff to finding passion and purpose in the office. Tips, questions? email us.